Killer, who jumped parole, gets arrested

MUMBAI: Mumbai lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha's killer, who had jumped parole last year, has been arrested.

Sajjad Mughal, who was sentenced to life in jail in 2014 for the ghastly killing, left a jail in Maharashtra's Nasik in March last year, ostensibly to visit his unwell mother. He never returned.

Pallavi, 25, a lawyer and a national level swimmer, was brutally assaulted and murdered by Mughal, who worked as a watchman in her apartment building in central Mumbai. Mughal used a stolen key to sneak into her apartment and tried to rape her. When she fought back, he stabbed her repeatedly before slitting her throat.

Pallavi was found lying in a pool of blood by her fiance Avik Sengupta, who later died of a brain disorder.

Mughal was seen in his village of Salamabad in Kashmir's Uri district on 17 June.

After his escape, Maharashtra's Devendra Fadnavis government decided that rapists and murderers would no longer be allowed to leave jail on parole. The number of days of parole was also reduced from 90 to 46 days.